May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

Coastal Community Church Vision

Hope for our brokenness

Trust in our Risen Savior

Restoration for our city, nation, and world

We are disciples who walk intentionally with God.

Therefore…I choose to be changed by . I choose to seek Jesus frst.

I choose to join Jesus in His resurrection work.

[slowly] God’s love for you is constant. God is constantly moving towards you with open arms. Constantly. God’s mercy for you is never ending. No matter where you are stuck, God doesn’t give up on you.

God loves you. God wants you. God desires you. God meets you where you are. God does not want your resume; God wants you. God does not want your performance; God wants you. God does not want your self- salvation projects; God wants you. God loves you. You are precious in

His sight, engraved on the palm of His hand, created in love and chosen before the foundation of the world. You are redeemed by our Jesus before you could earn it, forgiven by our Savior on the cross before you knew you needed it, and given mercy before you could ask for it. Jesus grants you His worthiness and His life, honor you never earned. The Holy

Page 1 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

Spirit gives you a purpose for good, gifts beyond splendor to use for His glory and to give hope to those in need, a signifcance you’ve always wanted, a new family where you belong and are wanted, and a heaven to enjoy for all eternity.

This is your inheritance the moment you give up your self-salvation projects and allow Jesus to be your Savior. And this is the heartbeat of today’s passage. Can we pray to have ears to hear? Can we pray so that our internal resistances can be silenced? We want God’s inheritance, not our own. Prayer is the way we receive God’s inheritance; prayer is the way we lay down the table scraps we cling to so that we can have open hands to receive the riches we have in Jesus.

Pray. Read with me.

Luke 9:18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”

We so easily skip over the frst part of this verse and immediately address Jesus’ question. Everything that happens in today’s passage comes from prayer. We will come back to this. Jesus is with his friends, praying, and he asks them a question: Who do the crowds say I am? It’s a good question. Everyone has an opinion about who Jesus is. Ask 20

Page 2 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock people on the street about Jesus and 20 different Jesus’s will be explained to you. What do the disciples say?

Luke 9:19 They replied, “Some say ; others say ; and still others, that one of the of long ago has come back to life.”

These are three distinct categories.

John the Baptist is present tense, a wild man, the most popular preacher in Israel, offensive, weird— totally unique. John the Baptist is

Lebron James. You might love him or hate him…but you can’t argue that he’s a superstar and a lightning rod. And what did John the Baptist preach? He had one song, one chart topper, one hit, with one lyric:

“Repent, the Kingdom of God is here. John is saying: God is here. You’re not fooling anyone. God can see you in every moment, every situation, every thought and intention…you can’t hide. And God isn’t striking you down and burning you to a crisp. God, therefore, is full of mercy and love. So repent. Turn your heart back to God. Trust Him again.”

Everyone knew John’s message to be true; it struck like thunder and was non-negotiable like lightning. But you could dismiss the message because the messenger was controversial: camel hair clothing…eating bugs…offensive and brash…maybe too extreme.

So what about Elijah? Elijah was the Michael Jordan of prophets.

He could fy. Elijah raised people from the dead and gave a widow a

Page 3 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock never ending jar of oil and four. Elijah healed lepers and called down fre from heaven and laughed in the face of 900 false prophets who wanted him dead. But Elijah was more legend than history. He lived 700 years before Jesus…imagine if Jordan lived 700 years ago and we had none of the footage, only the stories of his greatness? Elijah was less a person with a message and more a legend that you honored with an empty seat at your table during Passover. To honor Elijah was to be… well, religious. “Sure, I believe Elijah and his love for God. See…here’s the seat at the table.” It’s like people putting up the Christmas tree, not realizing that the tree is covered in lights to remember that Jesus is the light of the world in the middle of our deep dark winter.

How about the prophets? Which ones? All of them? Everyone loved the prophets because they spoke truth to the corrupt power in their day…but of course we’re better than that now, right? We look back into our own history and say, “I’m so glad I’m smarter than those idiots in the past. Whew. Thank goodness we got that all fgured out.” We have the same cultural arrogance and Israel was no different with the memory of their prophets. They had learned those lessons, right?

So what are the disciples saying? People were convinced Jesus is an all-star…hall of fame bound. But we do weird things with those who are extremely talented. We venerate them but also dismiss them as

Page 4 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock anomalies that have little to do with our daily life. We buy their shoes and albums and posters and t-shirts…but their greatness seems far far beyond our reach. We adore them and also know their life and their impact and their message will never really be our own. And Jesus knew this. So he asks the disciples, just as Jesus asks you, the question every human being must answer:

Luke 9:20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Who is Jesus to you? Before you say the ‘right’ answer, think carefully about your life. Does Jesus have any say or any sway into your everyday life…or is Jesus waaaaay out there in ‘unrealistic teacher’ or

‘hero’ land? Is Jesus someone you talk to…and listen to each day? Or is Jesus someone you appreciate from a distance like the greats of history, like Bach or Michelangelo or Jackie Robinson? We all know the answer to my questions. The answer is (d), all of the above.

But Jesus is constant in his love for you. Jesus is constant in his mercy towards you. Jesus comes to you where you are. And Jesus is not interested in your resume or self-salvation projects; Jesus wants you.

Peter, somehow, stumbles into the right answer:

Luke 9:20…Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”

Messiah is the Hebrew word, Christ is the greek word, and both mean: Savior. Jesus is Savior, which means Jesus saves us from

Page 5 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock something…because we’re lost, trapped, bound…in need. But in the verses immediately following this passage, which we will read next week,

Peter will demonstrate he doesn’t understand what kind of Savior Jesus is at all. This is our story. We hear ‘Jesus is my Savior’ and we get it. We agree. And then we forget. Jesus loves me and chooses me…but I’m still living as though I don’t belong. Jesus provides for me…but I’m still living in fear of not getting what I truly want. Jesus is enough for me… but I’m still insisting my performance affrms my worth. Jesus is my

Savior and Lord…but I still won’t follow his simple directions.

Why are we like this?

Human beings are broken in a peculiar way: we are hell bent on being our own savior. This is what we mean when we say ‘hope beyond our brokenness’. My brokenness is me trying to fx me; me trying to save me; my trying to do God’s job. We want to be our own doctor and patient at the same time. Our diagnoses are often wrong and our prescriptions fail, but we insist we’re practicing good medicine. We’re like the doctor who kept on having the same patient visit his offce week after week, who said in exasperation: “How many times do I have to say this to you? I don’t treat amnesia!” I’m lousy as fxing me. I’m no good at being my own Savior. I’m a lousy god…even though I try.

Page 6 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

But if you agree with Peter that Jesus is your Savior…then what

Jesus will say next will both challenge you and give you hope, for Jesus is about to preach the good news: We are more broken than we want to admit (we try to save ourselves way too much), and we are loved beyond what we could ever dare to hope. Read with me what Jesus says:

Luke 9:21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. 22 And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Jesus warns them to keep quiet…he doesn’t want to die just yet.

But dying? This was not expected. The Messiah is supposed to save… not die. The Christ is supposed to be celebrated…not rejected by every religious and moral authority in Israel. The Savior is supposed to be recognized and glorifed…not ridiculed and crushed. Jesus says ‘the Son of Man must suffer…’ The ‘must’ is important. This is not an accident. This is planned, foretold all throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. And then raised to life? This will sail right over the ears of the disciples. None of them will really get it; they are totally confused.

Page 7 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

Harry Truman, the President right at the end of WWII, once said: “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” Jesus isn’t trying to confuse the disciples, nor us. Let me try to explain.

Why must our Savior suffer and die? Why didn’t Jesus just snap his fngers and turn the Roman military occupation into dust? The answer is tied to our deepest need. If we needed more information, God would have sent the most spectacular and convincing multi-media presentation full of science and logic and evidence to explain everything perfectly.

But God didn’t. If we needed a strong man, God would have sent a warrior beyond compare to win all our battles and defeat all our enemies.

But God didn’t. If we needed comfort or peace, God would have sent the best therapist with the best medication ever. What is our deepest need?

Our deepest need is to be delivered from the bondage of our self- salvation projects. We need God to save us from our persistent determination to save ourselves, which is our rebellion against God and always leads to our death.

Thus God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus, to be our substitute, to bear the just condemnation of our rebellion on the cross even though he was innocent of it, to die in our place even though He didn’t deserve it. And then Jesus defeated our sin and our death by rising again, providing the very thing we desperately need: forgiveness and life. Jesus

Page 8 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock suffers and dies on the cross because our deepest need is for our souls to be saved and forgiven from our sin.

This is how Jesus explains it to the women and men who follow him:

Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

Jesus says: if you want to follow me…deny yourself and take up your cross. Why a cross?

The cross is Rome’s tool of pain and torture. It’s Rome’s tool to say

‘you can’t win’. It’s Rome’s tool to dominate and humiliate. The cross became a metaphor for helplessness and condemnation. No one survived the cross. They invented a word to describe how painful it was to have your body weight hang from nails pinned between your joints, only dying because you suffocate: excruciating, ex-crucio, or ‘from the cross’.

So what does it mean to take up your cross daily? It means this: if you want Jesus to be your Savior, then each day you must die to your self- salvation projects. Your self-salvation projects are the brutality of the cross; they will humiliate you, will not work, and are deadly. So each day admit your great need for Jesus to rescue you from the cross of your

Page 9 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock own making. If you do, you’ll live. If you try to save your life by yourself… you’ll never get down from your cross on your own…you’ll die there… you will loose your life.

How do we save ourselves? We fnd anything to satisfy us…except

Jesus. Look, if you had a million dollars…no, a hundred million dollars….fne, a billion dollars…ok I get it, a hundred billion dollars…you could save yourself and everyone else, right? You could fnd anything and everything to satisfy yourself with those kinds of resources, couldn’t you? You wouldn’t need anyone or anything, especially God, right? All your problems would be gone, right? You would have everything you would need and want. Your marriage would be great, right? No stress… unlimited plastic surgery…endless vacations…endless laughter and joy and fun and magic moments. Your family would be perfect, right? You would have all the therapists and tutors and advantages money could buy. You couldn’t possibly fail, could you? And what did we read this week? Bill and Melinda Gates, the richest people in the world with a fortune of $124 billion dollars, are getting a divorce. No amount of money or entertainment or work or intelligence or man-made signifcance can satisfy our deepest need: we need Jesus to be our

Savior. We will fall apart unless we have him. We will loose our life if we try to save our own.

Page 10 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

This is why we take up our cross each day. We say each day to

Jesus: “I can’t do this on my own. I need you.” Or using the ancient language of the church: we confess. Or to use the ancient prayer of the church: Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. What happens when we take up our cross each day and trust Jesus to be our

Savior? We set down our self-salvation project and receive a Savior. We set down our fear and receive His hope. We set down our death and receive His life. We set down our resistance and receive His provision.

We lay down our cynicism and receive His assurance. We let go of our power and pride and receive Jesus’ belonging and trust. We set down our exhaustion and are given His constant love and mercy. We set down our despair and take up His joy. We release our striving and are granted

His signifcance. This is our inheritance. This is our work. This is what faith in Jesus looks like.

Jesus continues. Read with me:

Luke 9:25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?

I’ve read and known this verse for years but I didn’t know what

Jesus was saying to me until this week. The last couple of weeks I’ve been talking to you guys about my 30 year relationship with power.

When I talk about ‘power’ I’m not talking about my ability or responsibility

Page 11 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock or capacity or agency to get things done. When I say ‘power’, I’m talking about the demonic lie that I can and should control the outcome of every situation all by myself…that I should know and master every process so that I can determine what will happen by my own…well, power.

Listen to God’s mercy and constant love for me: the spiritual gifts

God has given me over these years? Gentleness and love. I fnally connected the dots this past week in our staff meeting. The opposite of power is gentleness and love.

Here is the grace of God for you and me: even in our attempts to gain the whole world, our Heavenly Father will give us the very thing we need in order for our foolishness to be unraveled and undone. Every time I gave myself over to power, insisting that I must control the outcome, I would cease to be gentle and loving. I became hard and pointed, grumpy and barky…I became a twit. And I knew it. I was no longer really me and I knew it: I was actually gentle and loving; this was my true self. But giving myself over to power…I lost and forfeit my very self.

I want to challenge you right now. There is phrase in our vocabulary that is from the pit of hell and it goes like this: I’m just that way….this is who I am. When you say that, you’re forfeiting your very self to something that is not truly you.

Page 12 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

I’m just melancholy…this is who I am. No…that’s just depression or despair and you don’t have to forfeit your identity to this lie.

I’m just anxious…this is who I am. No…that’s just fear and you don’t have to forfeit your identity to this lie.

I just want to know how it all works so I can make it better…this is who I am. No…that’s just your power and pride and you don’t have to forfeit your identity to this lie.

I just like the nice things of this world…this is who I am. No…that just greed and you don’t have to forfeit your identity to this lie.

Are you picking up what I’m putting down? These lies about who you are all come from the same source…it’s our little self-salvation projects. And we forfeit our very self to that lie, to that awful death, if we say ‘this is just who I am’. Hogwash. Jesus didn’t die on the cross and destroy death and crush sin so that you would be bound up and captive to it. You are free. You are His. You are wanted. You are loved. And your inheritance is nothing less than total freedom in

Christ!

Luke 9:26 Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the

Father and of the holy .

Page 13 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock

There are two words repeated twice: ashamed and glory.

Ashamed means ‘reluctant to do something through fear of embarrassment or humiliation’. Here is the tough truth, the hard news of the . We will avoid taking up our cross daily because we’re afraid of being viewed as weak. We will avoid trusting Jesus as our Savior, preferring our own little self-salvation strategies, because we’re afraid that if we trust Jesus, Jesus won’t come through…and then all that’s left is loss and humiliation. In essence, we are saying this: I would rather take credit for saving myself, with its predictable outcomes and predictable glory…than give glory to God by fully trusting Him in every area of my life.

This won’t work. Why? I have dear friends, who don’t go to this church and will never hear this message…and both are still pinned to the crosses of their little self-salvation strategies. They said they once believed in Jesus. I went to seminary with them. But over the years they kept on making decision after decision to save themselves. Their money became their security, not God’s constant love. Their careers became their sense of signifcance, not Jesus’ gift of adoption and salvation. They slowly started to believe they weren’t all that broken, that hell was simply a metaphor rather than a reality, and thus the salvation Jesus offered them was a metaphor, a nice idea, a sentiment, a warm fuzzy greeting

Page 14 of 15 May 9th 2021 Luke: God’s Messiah Pastor Andy Rock card…not really needed but greatly appreciated. They became ashamed of Jesus and his church, categorizing the need for a savior as

‘weak’ and the church as ‘bigoted’ and the gospel as ‘judgmental’. Their marriage was hot and cold…hot when their passion for each other was in sync…cold when they both fgured out the other couldn’t bear the weigh of their souls. It took fve years after being ashamed of Jesus for one of them to have an affair. Their lives blew up. Both of them no longer believe in Jesus nor do they give Him glory for anything. They want all the glory for themselves. They are divorced, divided, destroyed…and miserable.

A vision of heaven…a vision of hell.

Page 15 of 15